


who'll sing the anthems and who will tell the stories?

by convallaria_majalis



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Non-Canonical Character Death, etta has a girlfriend and she's here too ok, references to Greek mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 06:00:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11201916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/convallaria_majalis/pseuds/convallaria_majalis
Summary: They got a bit more time. But it was never going to work out.





	who'll sing the anthems and who will tell the stories?

It's in the silent, empty space after Steve's funeral that Etta and Anandi stop by. 

Diana is impossibly grateful to see them. Etta, that rock of British persistence, always her own lovely self even when the world is falling apart around her. And Anandi, who Diana has only met once but loves like a sister, who listened with wide eyes to tales of a land where all the lovers are women, where people are not sorted and chosen by skin color as if they were fruit. (If Diana can ever find her own homeland again, she promises, Anandi will be first in line to visit.)

There's a hug, first, and some crying, but then Diana scrounges up a kettle and chocolates and they settle in around the kitchen table. Suddenly, with friends there, the place is cheery again, and good memories come bubbling to the surface.

They all know the story of Diana's first day in London by heart, but they tell it again like it's new, and the three of them laugh themselves hoarse.

"How are things at the safe house?" Diana asks. 

"Oh, you know," Anandi replies. "The children are all right, generally. Nigel-across-the-way is beginning to catch on that we're not just two nice old ladies running a home for wayward youths, but we'll find a way to outsmart him. We always do."

"They should've put us lesbians in charge of espionage in the war," Etta says earnestly, rapping the table for emphasis. "We could've run circles around the good captain--all due respect."

"Oh, no question," Diana agrees.

They go on in this vein - daily struggles, stories, reassurances - until the teapot runs dry and sorrow begins to creep back into the air. 

Then Etta jumps up. "We brought you something," she says. "Something of Steve's." 

She goes for a package by the door, and Diana watches, curious. Some relic from the war, unearthed in London?

When Etta brings the box over, though, it's filled with an assortment of small, leather-bound notebooks--dozens of them, all gently worn at the edges, no two alike in size or color. Diana looks at her questioningly. 

Etta shrugs. "Journals, I think. He'd been leaving them with Anandi and me since just after the war. Said they were for you, but not to give them to you yet." She swipes at a tear with her ever-ready handkerchief. "Eventually I realized what he meant."

Diana stares at the notebooks and remembers in flashes. She's seen each one before. Steve slipping a notebook into his pocket in the mornings, along with his keys and change. Seeing him settled in a chair in the evenings, busily writing, only stopping for a quick kiss and a smile as she passed by. She'd thought they were just grocery lists, or work planners, but if he'd saved them, wanted her to have them--

"Thank you," Diana says, and because she can't say anything else, she pulls them both in for a hug. 

"We know you might not want to leave here just yet," Anandi says, patting Diana's shoulder, "but if the place starts to feel too empty, just remember, there's always a room for you at the house."

"Yes, of course!" says Etta, brightening. "We could put you on the top floor, with some of the quieter kids. They don't mind coming and going at odd hours, you know, and they know better than to pry."

"That sounds lovely," Diana tells her. "I'll think about it."

"Good." Etta dimples and takes her hand. "Oh! Nandi, the soup."

Anandi drops a package of her famous homemade soup on the table - enough to keep Diana fed for a week - and they depart, amid more hugs and tears and "just call if you need anything! Anything at all!"

They're so sweet, Diana thinks. She's lucky to have such good friends. 

With the door shut, and the silence in her ears again, Diana eyes the box of books. There's a note among them, with her name on the envelope. She steels herself and opens it. 

 

"Diana--

I didn't want to leave you empty-handed.

Love always,

Steve"

 

It's in Etta's hand, dated just a few days ago. By then he was too weak to write. 

_Men are not made for war._

The doctors said it was lung cancer-- likely caused, or worsened, by the war, the gas, the terrible conditions. It meant Steve was sick for some time before it killed him. 

It was one thing to read of man's frailty: sickness, infirmity, death. It was another to see it happen before her own eyes. 

Diana can feel herself falling - a feeling that's hardly new. She takes a moment to breathe and then turns her attention to the journals.

She doesn't think she's ready to sit and read through them (it would take days, in any case), but she picks a few at random and flips quickly through. They're numbered in dark ink on the inside cover, closely printed in what she knows is Steve's neatest writing. 

It's all there: the years after the war, with Steve's adjustment to peacetime and Diana's bewilderment at the society and customs of men; his shell-shock, angry outbursts, night terrors; their years of separation, reconciliation, and finally the move to the States, to be closer to where he grew up and to let her see more of the world.

The grocery lists and work notes are there too, in with the rest of it. The combination, the way all these little things together made up Steve's life, has Diana fascinated. 

She catches a sentence, from an account of one of their wilder nights together. Despite everything, it manages to bring a blush to her cheeks, and she smiles. 

And then there's his voice in her ear, clear as a whistle: _Hey, angel. What can I do to see that smile?_

He had brought such pain into her life - war, loss, injustice. But he had also brought great understanding, and yes, love. Diana tries to take the sum of it, to look at things as she will someday, from a distance.

It is difficult.

That day on the beach had not only been her first time seeing a man. It had been her first true battle, the first time she had seen death, the first time her own Amazons had fallen before her eyes. 

So much, all at once, and yet how much had been still to come. 

\--

Diana opens the last journal and rifles through it. Pages flip and still under her fingers.

There's a glimpse of green, and she flips back to the inside cover--and stops breathing. 

Under the thickly printed number that marks this book as the last, drawn carefully in green ink, there's a little grasshopper. 

_Eos._

Diana catches the edge of the table, hard, and sobs. Her knees will not bear her up, so she sinks to the floor, clutching the little book in both hands. 

The story of Eos had often come to mind, as she sat with Steve's head in her lap or lay curled tight around him in bed, but when they talked of their favorite childhood tales Diana could never bring herself to tell it. It was altogether too real, too achingly relevant, and like all the old stories she knew it by heart.

Eos, goddess of the dawn, had fallen madly in love with a mortal man. Realizing the same fate would befall him as all mortals, she went to Zeus, and begged him to grant her love eternal life.

Zeus obliged, and they were happy together for some time.

But Eos had not thought to ask for eternal _youth,_ and she watched in horror as he began to grow old and shriveled, shrinking smaller day by day. Finally, too small and weak to be a man at all, he became a grasshopper, chirping quietly until the end of time. 

Diana sits there, on the floor next to the kitchen table, and cries until she is cried out. 

She doesn't want to be Eos. Yet she feels she should have done _something_ \- though there's no Zeus to ask now, and anyway, the stories are more than clear on what happens when you try to prolong mortal life. 

Gods, but Diana misses him. 

Besides, she reminds herself, she _did_ do something. Many times. Not only that morning on Themyscira, but on countless other occasions, she had stepped in when some accident or other would have cut his life's thread. 

That man was always getting himself into trouble. 

Finally she peels herself off the floor, washes her face. After a little sword practice to clear her mind, she takes the box of notebooks and settles them down beside the bed. 

She climbs in, cocoons herself in blankets that still smell like Steve, and begins to read. 

\--

As the years pass she reads the journals again and again, not to cling to the past but to remind herself of the beauty, the everyday strength and love that makes up just one human life. 

There are parts she returns to more often, depending on her mood and what she needs to hear that day. But in the end, her most-read entry is this one, from November 1919:

> _Nov 5: Sunny and crisp. To pick up on way home: eggs, starch, some sparklers if any left. Will need patches for bullet holes in D.'s sleeves, but can wait._
> 
> _D. homesick this morning; hoping fireworks later will cheer her up. Explaining Guy Fawkes Night will be a challenge. Although maybe not, those Amazons love a good victory celebration._
> 
> _I am trying every day to be worthy of her. Dear God--or gods, or whatever--please don't take me from her too soon._

**Author's Note:**

> Even if Steve had managed to get out of that plane, there'd still be the elephant in the room of him being, y'know, mortal, and Diana being an actual literal goddess. I wanted to explore that.
> 
> Anybody else see the play War Horse and cry the entire way through? Just me? Anyway that's where the title is from.   
> [(Youtube link to the song)](https://youtu.be/dEa4zueeAoo)


End file.
